International Cat Speculators Since 2006

Posts tagged ‘National Radio’

If I thought the National government was seriously trying to hobble the state broadcaster or force it to adopt a commercial model, I’d be one of the first volunteers to man the barricades outside Radio New Zealand House. Notwithstanding my occasional whinges about it (mostly to do with pervasive political bias, which is not nearly as marked now as it used to be), RNZ is a national treasure. My quality of life, and that of virtually everyone in my circle of friends and acquaintances, would be greatly diminished without it. It follows that if Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman does anything to disembowel the institution, as some of his critics (such as the Greens’ Sue Kedgley) allege he is plotting to do, National can expect a savage backlash – much of it from people of a centre-right disposition who are otherwise broadly National-friendly.

But having followed the flurry of alarmist publicity about the possibility of budget cuts, I’m left wondering what all the fuss is about. It seems RNZ has simply been told it must get by on its current funding for the foreseeable future – which is no more nor less than other government departments are doing. If that means having to curb some of its aspirations, such as opening an office in Gisborne, that’s surely a relatively small sacrifice at a time when the government is borrowing a hair-raising $250 million a week to prop up an anaemic economy.

It’s a pretty typical center-right response. National Radio is a quality station, and delivers a news product that can’t be compared to commercial stations in spite of some left-wing bias.

The typical left-wing response seems to be a hyperventilating sort of conspiracy theory that the government wants to shut down the station to prevent the last bastion of critical media in this country.

Sue Kedgley was even cut down on Morning Report yesterday by Geoff Robinson himself when she tried to scaremonger about National Radio on-selling it’s news. Geoff of course remembered that the stations used to do that in the past – one is left wondering why they stopped.

Ms King said it would be like living in a Third World country if National Radio had to shut down between midnight and 6am.

Of course, what’s more likely is that they simply switch to re-broadcasting the BBC World Service. Hardly a drop in quality by any measure. Not opening a new regional office is hardly going to make much difference either.

(That’s not to say that some of the measure won’t be a backwards step. The introduction of FM signal was a boon to my morning commute way back when, as the signal didn’t get constantly interrupted.)

Back in the 90’s when I got into politics, this is the sort of issue that drove me to the right. You have on the left politicians hyperventilating and inventing silly stories, while on the right, you have people firmly grounded in reality.

Of course, here in New Zealand, it was the 12th when we learnt about it all.

Where was I?

I woke up to the sound of National Radio as I always have. Now, I’m usually half-awake at this time so the news can get a bit jumbled. So when the spoke about the World Trade Centre on fire, I was like “oh yea, that must have been x years ago today or something”.

Then they said that the Pentagon was on fire.

<censored>.

I thought, “Either they’re playing fiction, or the world is ending.”
I got out of bed like it was on fire and turned on the TV. Turned out the world was ending. At least it was in the eastern USA.

In Palestine they were celebrating. Idiots, great time to piss off those who have always helped you most.

At work, people were watching TV all day, especially Americans. People were also saying stupid things, like there’ll be another wave of attacks. Yea, now that every gun in the USA is loaded, every plane in the air, every one on the highest level of alert they’ll try something else. Terrorism doesn’t work like that.
A lot of people learnt who Osama Bin Laden was that day. I didn’t, I’d already read about him.

What surprised me in the days afterwards is how many people were opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan. I mean, here’s a country that’s torn by war for 20 years, 90% now controlled by the Taliban, and feminists are complaining about the USA staring a war.

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This Blog is the long time home of a blogger known across the internet as ScrubOne (That's Scrub One not Scru Bone). Where this handle has not been available, he is known as ScrubOneHD (HD for Half Done).

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ScrubOne confesses to the Christian faith, and conservative politics but does not necessarily blog according to public perception of either.

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